Guild Wars 2

Hello there, fellow adventurers!

I’ve posted this in Guild Wars 2 Guru forums too, but I thought it could be useful to have more answers.

It’s been almost five months since the game’s release, yet I’m unable to feel “good” with any of the characters I create. It’s like playing them until level 30 or so and then: BANG! Bored. I have a feeling that I’m having problems to feel attached to them.

I think I’ve pointed down the source of the issue, though: as a player I find difficult to emphatize with my character since he/she doesn’t have a fleshed personality and also, I can’t give him/her a personality of their own because later they react as they want in the Personal Story (scripted, of course).

They are neither a blank state (Shepard in the Mass Effect series) nor full fledged characters (Dante in Devil May Cry, Sora in Kingdom Hearts, etc.) and this thing in-between feels awkward to me.

The only thing WE CAN BE is some kind of… god? that decides what’s going to happen, but not HOW THEY REACT. I guess I was wrong, because that way I can hardly feel it’s MY STORY. Perhaps somewhere down the road I misunderstood the core philosophy of the Personal Story, but I would rather have more personal “answers” (since Ferocity/Dignity/Charming is completely useless right now, they’re just an icon) at exchange for “less” story. Maybe that’s just me, though.

Edit: Also, abut the personal story itself... how can I feel attached to ANY of the characters that appear there? It was difficult enough for me to help Quinn, because our "supposed friendship" was hardly fleshed. And it happens a lot, for what I've seen. It's like there's only black and white here...

I’m the only one that feels this way? I mean, I like to roleplay but ignoring a third of the game (the personal story) seems like throwing away an important chunk of it. I didn’t pay the money to act like if didn’t existed.

Someone knows how can I solve my… doubts? Yeah I know, I can just walk away, but first I need to know if there’s something else it could be done.

Thanks for everything, dudes/dudettes!

Hea there, I feel your pain with the personal story… As someone who writes a lot I’ve based my ingame characters of the characters in the story I’m writing. However none of them would reply the way they do ingame…
I decided to look at the personal story in a different way instead.
Per example… My thief. In my own story he’s trained an assassin from a very young age. Helping people and becoming a hero would not something he would do because ‘the world has to be saved’.
So instead I decided to see the story from a different point of view. My thief has some personal goals, and instead of helping all those people, he’s just acting. The people he helps? They are all part of his ‘big plan’.

Try to give it your own twist, why is your character suddenly behaving like that? Surely he or she must have a reason

Curae.1837:

Try to give it your own twist, why is your character suddenly behaving like that? Surely he or she must have a reason

I actually did this, for a while. For some reason, though, this game just grates on my nerves and imagination. I think it has something to do with what the OP said in that the characters are neither blank slates nor fully-fleshed. It’s just one cutscene after another of what is essentially a player-made shell; you created the outside (with a bunch of transmutation stones, no less), but the inside is all wrong and the two just don’t match.

Thus, my imagination carried “my” character to the Battle of Claw Island, where he decided to stay with Sieran. This game’s terrible story drove me to kill off my own character. I haven’t really been playing much, lately, either—just popping in now and again to say “hi” to my guildmates. It’s amazing how such a detachment can completely ruin a game for me.

Curae.1837:

Hea there, I feel your pain with the personal story… As someone who writes a lot I’ve based my ingame characters of the characters in the story I’m writing. However none of them would reply the way they do ingame…
I decided to look at the personal story in a different way instead.
Per example… My thief. In my own story he’s trained an assassin from a very young age. Helping people and becoming a hero would not something he would do because ‘the world has to be saved’.
So instead I decided to see the story from a different point of view. My thief has some personal goals, and instead of helping all those people, he’s just acting. The people he helps? They are all part of his ‘big plan’.

Try to give it your own twist, why is your character suddenly behaving like that? Surely he or she must have a reason

You sound like me. This is exactly what I did—after I wrote the stories for my characters, I was really dissapointed by the fact that they acted completely different from how they ought to. Luckily for my main, she’s always been manipulative and sneaky. I figured she was just acting all “heroic” because she knows that it’s the best thing she can do socially to gain trust/loyalty. Once she gets it, she’ll use it for her own evil plans XD

So yeah, I agree with the OP. I’m not interested in controlling what happens to my character. What I want to control is how my character reacts after something happens—the words that come from her mouth, the feelings she has, the morals she decides to follow.

Well I sort of understand you but really don’t forget, it must have been really hard to make all these different paths you can choose and with the game already taking a huge amount of time to complete it would take a lot more to make emotions be a thing in the game. Im sure they will add something in the future regarding this so you might want to post this in the suggestions regarding more chosen by you emotions from your character.

Weindrasi.3805:

So yeah, I agree with the OP. I’m not interested in controlling what happens to my character. What I want to control is how my character reacts after something happens—the words that come from her mouth, the feelings she has, the morals she decides to follow.

It would already help a lot if only the personality type made any sort of effect. There’s quite a big difference, or should be, between my ‘militant’ thief and my ‘charming’ mesmer…

SomeoneElse.3685:

Well I sort of understand you but really don’t forget, it must have been really hard to make all these different paths you can choose and with the game already taking a huge amount of time to complete it would take a lot more to make emotions be a thing in the game. Im sure they will add something in the future regarding this so you might want to post this in the suggestions regarding more chosen by you emotions from your character.

I understand it’s a difficult thing, and also quite a pricey thing to make so many different story paths. It’s too bad however that the story if you’d work out the paths on paper is a funnel. (is that the right word..? Not sure.) You all start out differently, but are being pushed towards the same ending.
At the moment we join an order all personality that was developed for our race also dissapears. The comic-relief Asura, the witty Charr, the cheerfull Sylvari, heroic Norn… They all get pushed into ‘serious human.’ :/

Curae.1837:

Weindrasi.3805:

So yeah, I agree with the OP. I’m not interested in controlling what happens to my character. What I want to control is how my character reacts after something happens—the words that come from her mouth, the feelings she has, the morals she decides to follow.

It would already help a lot if only the personality type made any sort of effect. There’s quite a big difference, or should be, between my ‘militant’ thief and my ‘charming’ mesmer…

SomeoneElse.3685:

Well I sort of understand you but really don’t forget, it must have been really hard to make all these different paths you can choose and with the game already taking a huge amount of time to complete it would take a lot more to make emotions be a thing in the game. Im sure they will add something in the future regarding this so you might want to post this in the suggestions regarding more chosen by you emotions from your character.

I understand it’s a difficult thing, and also quite a pricey thing to make so many different story paths. It’s too bad however that the story if you’d work out the paths on paper is a funnel. (is that the right word..? Not sure.) You all start out differently, but are being pushed towards the same ending.
At the moment we join an order all personality that was developed for our race also dissapears. The comic-relief Asura, the witty Charr, the cheerfull Sylvari, heroic Norn… They all get pushed into ‘serious human.’ :/

Yeah, that last part you mentioned is very aggravating. I’m already seeing it on my Vigil-joined Charr.

I get the feeling that the characters we create are, in fact, expected to be a blank slate who will be shaped by the story as you play through it. That’s not a view of roleplaying a character that really works for me; mine tend to start with a history and personality of their own, which of course, will be influenced by their experiences over the course of play. Having said that, I can see why they approached it the way they did. As others have already mentioned, it would be an awfully big job to try to create stories that are going to work for the thousands and thousands of unique characters concepts that players can come up with. No game developer will ever succeed at that.

Despite that, I think there are things that could make the story more accessible to a wider variety of characters, and I hope to see them try in future expansions. In particular, I very much hope we see the cutscenes used much more sparingly. I would rather play my character, not have him or her played for me. Dialogue options that at least provide the illusion of choice would be far preferable to me. And of course, a branching mission or two, where the choice our character makes actually matters, would be even better.

@Curae, I like the way you describe how you put your own personal twist on the story. I’ve had to do much the same thing, although there have been moments when I’ve had to really, really stretch.

EDIT: Grammar

I have to agree, my Charr Necro (in my mind on the creation screen) was suppose to be a fairly ruthless, hardened Charr soldier making his way through the world by force and ferocity. The personal story didn’t really fit with that image I had on the creation screen. My human mage from a noble background was suppose to be a naive young girl who for the first times goes adventuring in the big wide world, but the personal story didn’t really match that image either.

Now I don’t really blame ANet or feel that they did a completely horrible job, after all they implemented this system with I’m sure a lot of good intent. But in the future however (when they hopefully add more to these personal stories) I hope they keep in mind that the image that players have in their minds doesn’t always match the story they write. Perhaps if they added a few dialogue options to allows us to interject a bit more of the image we had in our minds into the plot they wrote that could work, perhaps our characters can play a less prominent role and thus experience the plot without having to be too active in it and thus be more of a blank slate, or perhaps ANet can come up with some other wonderful solution. Either way I do hope that ANet tries to improve on what they’ve already done.

I’ve scanned through all the above and it all seems valid, but another point that struck me was when the options I selected didn’t actually seem to reflect what was going on.

Case in point: Charr, with an “honorless gladium” sire. When making a character, the self-description is that you have no respect for your sire. Come act II when you start on that arc, and suddenly he’s still with his warband and abandoning it doesn’t sound like a thing he’d do. Nor is that the only such discrepancy in that particular quest line.

Bad enough that we have no say in just how our characters respond to these situations, but when the cues we’re offered turn into blatant lies, it rather makes it hard to stay engaged.

I’ve pretty much wound up using the initial setup as a starting point, but flat ignoring what of the story doesn’t seem to fit the one I have going for my character. This is obviously suboptimal for my engagement with the game, but there it is.

I’ve really enjoyed the stories up to a point, since I like to explore EVERYTHING, I’ve tried out all the races (except Charr, I played GW1 too much ) to see how they differ and how they mesh. All have been quite interesting, not necessarily how I might have played them had I full control, but not horrible.

The main problem is around level 30-40 I think, when it stops being about the choices you made at the beginning. My guess is that ANet had to make decisions about game size and the time involved to create the different branches the story could take, therefore, they took some shortcuts in order to deliver the game when they did.

Rhinzual.7861:

Curae.1837:

Weindrasi.3805:

So yeah, I agree with the OP. I’m not interested in controlling what happens to my character. What I want to control is how my character reacts after something happens—the words that come from her mouth, the feelings she has, the morals she decides to follow.

It would already help a lot if only the personality type made any sort of effect. There’s quite a big difference, or should be, between my ‘militant’ thief and my ‘charming’ mesmer…

SomeoneElse.3685:

Well I sort of understand you but really don’t forget, it must have been really hard to make all these different paths you can choose and with the game already taking a huge amount of time to complete it would take a lot more to make emotions be a thing in the game. Im sure they will add something in the future regarding this so you might want to post this in the suggestions regarding more chosen by you emotions from your character.

I understand it’s a difficult thing, and also quite a pricey thing to make so many different story paths. It’s too bad however that the story if you’d work out the paths on paper is a funnel. (is that the right word..? Not sure.) You all start out differently, but are being pushed towards the same ending.
At the moment we join an order all personality that was developed for our race also dissapears. The comic-relief Asura, the witty Charr, the cheerfull Sylvari, heroic Norn… They all get pushed into ‘serious human.’ :/

Yeah, that last part you mentioned is very aggravating. I’m already seeing it on my Vigil-joined Charr.

I feel the same way, you’re fighting Charr renegades, even though you are a Charr. And they never mention “Sorry for making you kill your own people.” I never noticed us slaughtering a bunch of Norn, Warmaster… (Sarcastic)

Dirk Axeraider.5473:

Rhinzual.7861:

Curae.1837:

Weindrasi.3805:

So yeah, I agree with the OP. I’m not interested in controlling what happens to my character. What I want to control is how my character reacts after something happens—the words that come from her mouth, the feelings she has, the morals she decides to follow.

It would already help a lot if only the personality type made any sort of effect. There’s quite a big difference, or should be, between my ‘militant’ thief and my ‘charming’ mesmer…

SomeoneElse.3685:

Well I sort of understand you but really don’t forget, it must have been really hard to make all these different paths you can choose and with the game already taking a huge amount of time to complete it would take a lot more to make emotions be a thing in the game. Im sure they will add something in the future regarding this so you might want to post this in the suggestions regarding more chosen by you emotions from your character.

I understand it’s a difficult thing, and also quite a pricey thing to make so many different story paths. It’s too bad however that the story if you’d work out the paths on paper is a funnel. (is that the right word..? Not sure.) You all start out differently, but are being pushed towards the same ending.
At the moment we join an order all personality that was developed for our race also dissapears. The comic-relief Asura, the witty Charr, the cheerfull Sylvari, heroic Norn… They all get pushed into ‘serious human.’ :/

Yeah, that last part you mentioned is very aggravating. I’m already seeing it on my Vigil-joined Charr.

I feel the same way, you’re fighting Charr renegades, even though you are a Charr. And they never mention “Sorry for making you kill your own people.” I never noticed us slaughtering a bunch of Norn, Warmaster… (Sarcastic)

I guess for the Charr it makes sense, if you’re not willing to be a part of the machine, even as a Gladium waiting for a warband/willing to do pitiful grunt work or a Scrapper doing the pitiful but required tasks, then you have no place in Charr society.

I pressed on until I heard Trahearne give that “speech” right before the invasion of Orr begins, then promptly decided salad-heads are not good generals after all and struck out on my own.

Been happily slaughtering risen ever since and I feel much better now. Loot is good, fighting is good, and I bring my own drink, everything a Norn needs.